I think the real issue here is ...

Post #77,780 by dmarker 1/29/03 10:33:18 AM Reply	I think the real issue here is ... that MS could use its Win monopoly to block Java for years while it clones its own equivalent (C#) plus migration tools, then bundles it then damages Java. Java has too much momentum to become extinct - too many large companies & corporations now rely on Java based technology. Java is the most widely taught OOT programming lang at universities worldwide. Personally I prefer Smalltalk - but Java will do. Cheers Doug
Post #77,902 by tseliot 1/29/03 4:21:43 PM Reply	ObMeToo Personally I prefer Smalltalk - but Java will do. sigh Yeah. Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #78,023 by deSitter 1/30/03 5:41:44 AM Reply	Re: I think the real issue here is ... The corporate large scale Java projects I've seen (three of them) were all brain-dead resource pigs. I think Java will be dropped as soon as it dawns on everyone how unproductive it is. -drl
Post #78,747 by dmarker 2/2/03 7:57:53 AM Reply	C'mon - did MSBasic interpreter get dropped ??? NO! - it became VB & the basis for a software revolution. Java solves more problems that it introduced. All we are debating is the degree. Cheers Doug
Post #78,765 by deSitter 2/2/03 12:53:11 PM Reply	Re: C'mon - did MSBasic interpreter get dropped ??? Java had all the warts of C++ and none of the charm. "But whah, it's not a language, whah, it's an VM environment, whah whah." Yeah. Sure. -drl
Post #78,829 by dmarker 2/2/03 11:24:01 PM Reply	If that were true Java would've never taken off !!! C++ Is a s*** of a language to program in due to its utter complexity - it takes a very special type of person to write effective memory management routines. Java took that mess away & allowed people to rapidly develop solutions that didn't do memory leaks all over the place. Doug
Post #78,832 by deSitter 2/3/03 12:16:29 AM 2/3/03 12:18:09 AM Reply	Re: If that were true Java would've never taken off !!! That must be why you need 256M per thread. They collect the garbage and store it in the spare bedroom. Also, Java took off because it's the environment in which the least damage can be done by bad programming. What Java really is - the reincarnation of UCD-Pascal. -drl Edited by deSitter Feb. 3, 2003, 12:18:09 AM EST Expand All History
Post #78,893 by admin 2/3/03 10:11:19 AM Reply	Using 256M per thread... ... is a sign of a bad Java programmer. Java requires no less care to keep memory usage down. It does, however, prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot through obscure memory leaks. C++ is garbage. Moreso than Java. That's not to say Java isn't garbage; it just Sucks Less Than C++. I wish that Objective C were more prevalent, personally. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #79,206 by jb4 2/4/03 11:41:50 AM Reply	I must be from outta town... ...but I guess I don't see it. Not to brag, but I've been writing effective C++ programs for over 13 years now. I don't have problems with memory leaks (well, not in the last 10 years or so, anyway...;-) ), I don't find it "overly complex to write memory management routines" (and I've written my share of operator new overloads, and an occasional allocator or two) So what is it? Was it that you were just burned trying to write a C++ program before you were fully versed in it? Did you come to C++ directly from Basic or PL/1 or some other abomination? Is it just that C++ isn't as "cool" as Smalltalk? I guess I just don't get the hostility. For my own part, I'd rather write in C++ than C, or Pascal, or Java, or (visual) Basic, or C-pigpen, or any language that purports to "protect me from myself". (I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself, thankyouverymuch...I know how to use a rubber!). To be sure, I don't know Objective-C or Smalltalk, both of which are supposed to be "very cool", but for some unfathomable reason, seem to be relagated to the nether reaches of computer languagedom (is there a reason for that?). So perhaps when I get expoed to these gems, I might have to change my mind. Until then, I guess I just don't see the reason for all this vitriol. So ante up, Ross, Scott. Whatcher problem? jb4 "They lead. They don't manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can't manage him to drink." Richard Kerr, United Technologies Corporation, 1990
Post #79,214 by admin 2/4/03 12:01:11 PM 2/4/03 12:05:05 PM Reply	Re: I must be from outta town... C++ is a godforsaken hack, overly complex for what it purports to accomplish. The whole concept of "interface defined by header file" is ridiculous. The Byzantine pointer usage, template definitions, etc. As you aptly put it: "burned trying to write a C++ program before you were fully versed in it". Any language that requires months or years of in-depth study to use effectively Just Isn't Worth It in my book. I'm not exactly stupid when it comes to learning new languages, either. Did you come to C++ directly from Basic or PL/1 or some other abomination? No, directly from Java, Python, C, and a few other languages. I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself, thankyouverymuch Java doesn't protect me from anything that's worth worrying about. If I want to worry about when an object gets released from memory, I can. Otherwise I don't have to. With C++ I don't really have that choice, apart from using add-on hacks like "smart pointers". Bottom line: C++ requires to much damn thought and code that could better be spent solving actual problems, instead of those created by the compiler. Caveat: perhaps if I only had to deal with my own code, I could limit the stupidities. However, that isn't the Real World, so I have to deal with const madness and the like. YMMV. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..." Edited by admin Feb. 4, 2003, 12:05:05 PM EST Expand All History
Post #79,246 by jb4 2/4/03 1:35:43 PM Reply	There is NOTHING wrong with pointers! Damn, Scott, you just hit a hot button with me. The Byzantine pointer usage,[...] Any "Byzantine pointer usage" is not the fault of the language, dammit! It is, purely, simply, and solely the fault of the programmer!!! who doesn't know how, when, or why to use pointers. Don't go blaming the language for the faults of the practitioners! There is no doubt that you are "[...]not exactly stupid when it comes to learning new languages, either.". I'm using a perfect example of that right now. But for you to make a remark like that is so unlike you so as to make me believe that your login has been copped by someone else. There is nothing wrong with pointers. There is nothing wrong with pointers in C, nor in C++, nor in Objective-C, nor in assembly, nor in any other computer language that allows them. IMnsHO, computer languages that don't allow them are brain damaged, as there are some things you just can't do without them. Nowadays, there are languages that try to make you believe that there are no pointers in the language; they try to "hide" pointers from you, making them with names like "references". These are similarly brain-damaged, for the simple reason that they make you play hide-and-seek with the address of an object. I wouldn't want to write an OS in such a language. If you want to decry the (ab)users of the tool, fine. I'll join you! But don't decry the tool itself. jb4 "They lead. They don't manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can't manage him to drink." Richard Kerr, United Technologies Corporation, 1990
Post #79,257 by admin 2/4/03 1:55:10 PM Reply	Re: There is NOTHING wrong with pointers! (new thread) Created as new thread #79256 titled [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=79256\|Re: There is NOTHING wrong with pointers!] Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #79,259 by CRConrad 2/4/03 1:57:07 PM 2/4/03 1:59:50 PM Reply	Thing is, some tools are more abuse-prone than others. [Please redirect any replies to this to "Programming", as I should have done in the first place. I just forgot where we were at... See now, Scott, why we need to be able to redirect on edit? :^] And C/C++ is definitely one of the more abuse-prone ones, when it comes to pointers. Sure, the Byzantine pointer usage can be said to be the fault of the practitioners... But why, then, is such an overwhelming majority of C/C++ code just such a Byzantine mess? Are you saying the language(s) attract (at least comparatively) moronic coders? No, I think there's something wrong in the language itself; something that positively encourages such over- (or ab-) use of pointers. Perhaps, as the flip side to your "languages that don't allow them are brain damaged" coin, C/C++ is/are at least equally brain damaged language(s) because they don't allow you to do a lot of stuff without pointers -- everybody going, "that's easy, just use pointers!" when the question comes up -- that you really ought to be able to do without them? [link\|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode\|Christian R. Conrad] (I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.) Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575\|Ashton Brown] Edited by CRConrad Feb. 4, 2003, 01:59:50 PM EST Expand All History
Post #79,336 by dmarker 2/4/03 7:43:47 PM Reply	You just said it !!!! >> Don't go blaming the language for the faults of the practitioners! << This point you made says it all in regard to C++. Good practitioners of C++ are gold, BUT, they are few & far between - That is the point. Doug M
Post #79,335 by dmarker 2/4/03 7:40:45 PM Reply	Saved me the trouble - ditto - to JB4 You can speak for yourself and I am sure you are a disciplined programmer, but as another poster mentioned the word arrogance (not say it applies to you) but it does apply to too many programmers who think their "s*** doesn't smell" because they are among the elite who can program in C++ and manage memory allocation & deallocation effectively. They tend to be in the minority by far. Programming is about getting work done & is not all about proving how clever one is. Java (more so with Smalltalk) allows more effective work to be done. C++ as a way of getting work done, is a pig. Cheers Doug Marker
Post #79,276 by deSitter 2/4/03 3:07:00 PM Reply	Re: Using 256M per thread... Yeah, I reckon. Are there any good ones? I remember you solving a problem for the local Java ace when he asked me about I problem. "I haven't the faintest idea, but I know someone who does!" We fired up a chat with you and you solved it in 5 minutes. He didn't ask any more questions after that. -drl
Post #79,290 by admin 2/4/03 3:42:46 PM Reply	"Are there any good ones?" Didn't you just answer that question...? ;-) Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #78,833 by deSitter 2/3/03 12:22:36 AM Reply	Also I assume by "writing memory management routines" you mean dynamic storage allocation as in C - this is simply a matter of testing and discipline, even in bare C, and it's easier in C++ (but more prone to abuse). A decent C programmer never worries about leaks, because only a lazy sloppy gross oversight would produce one. -drl
Post #78,856 by dmarker 2/3/03 5:35:18 AM Reply	Bull**** You appear to have never had to spend hours, days, week, months tracking down memory leaks in C++ code. Or, in C++ commercial software. I will buy out of this thread because I can't believe what I am hearing & have concluded it is you at your worst shooting from the lip. Cheers Doug (luv ya otherwise <g>)
Post #79,275 by deSitter 2/4/03 3:03:02 PM Reply	Sure I Have I know C is easy to abuse - I know C++ is shit when used wrong, and by definition shit as an object environment. But mallocing and freeing is just a non-issue. Always use an explicit cast in C, always know the size of data, do the prep work - just like writing assembler. C is not a good application langauge in any case, so this discussion is pointless. Personally, I agree with Scott, that Obj-C is a better approach than C++, but it's still C and it still sucks as an application language. -drl
Post #78,859 by ben_tilly 2/3/03 7:09:34 AM Reply	Your definition of a decent C programmer Falls under my definition of an arrogant idiot. Cheers, Ben "good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not" - [link\|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html\|Stefano Mazzocchi]
Post #78,873 by boxley 2/3/03 8:36:58 AM Reply	Well my definition of a good C++ programmer is a thoughtful person who verifies what each module does in fact do before releasing it to the wild. I know of 2 folk Wil Gerkin and Rob Simonelli whose C++ skills should be emulated thru out the business even if it would put people like me out of business. thanx, bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] questions, help? [link\|mailto:pappas@catholic.org\|email pappas at catholic.org]
Post #78,956 by tuberculosis 2/3/03 12:58:45 PM Reply	Hey I'm Special! As in short bus special. You can automate C++ memory use much of the time - if you're clever and have patience and only use smart pointers (which you can get to act almost but not quite like real pointers) and are disciplined about how you pass things around (stack memory passes as references, heap by pointer - always decide what kind of class you have when defining it - never have some objects of a class live on the stack and others on the heap). I haven't mucked with it lately but there are a bazillion memory management gotchas in C++ (one of which has been fixed I think (delete vs delete[]) but more than C ever had), any of which can bite you in the ass if you so much as cast a single pointer. I've also seen projects saved by purchasing a commercial GC lib. You could have GC in C++, but the culture is opposed to the "cost" of one. Mostly out of ignorance. If Java did anything at all for the world - it showed that GC can perform reasonably (not like most enlightened people didn't know that - but how many people are enlightened?). I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more. --Alan Perlis
Post #79,207 by jb4 2/4/03 11:44:55 AM Reply	GC lib? Whachew talking 'bout, Willis? jb4 "They lead. They don't manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can't manage him to drink." Richard Kerr, United Technologies Corporation, 1990
Post #79,215 by admin 2/4/03 12:02:21 PM Reply	Garbage Collection. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #78,791 by tuberculosis 2/2/03 5:02:07 PM Reply	Will it do? I used to think so. Now I don't think it will. People who have been brought up in that environment have walls in their heads that prevent them from seeking maximum simplicity. I don't know how else to put it but there are several interesting programming concepts that have been more or less (usually less) "ported" to java - but if you started with Java you'd never get there. As an example, look at every "architecture" thats been created in the Java world. They are mostly shit. J2EE? Give me a break. Its insanely complex. RMI? Code generation of stubs? Crap and bloatware. Swing? Why is it so slow and why does it throw exceptions Java is a mule - useful but sterile. Nothing to advance the art on. I love to code - but not in Java anymore (or C++). I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more. --Alan Perlis
Post #78,796 by Andrew Grygus 2/2/03 6:30:35 PM Reply	Picture Hey Todd: i got tired of your picture being too dark to see. There's a [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com/images/sailinsq.jpg\|corrected version] at www.aaxnet.com/images/sailinsq.jpg you can use if you'd like. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #78,800 by tuberculosis 2/2/03 6:51:37 PM Reply	Switched URLs - Thanks! I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more. --Alan Perlis
Post #79,208 by jb4 2/4/03 11:46:57 AM Reply	So YOU'RE the one who fixed it! Thanks, Andy...I think... At least we can now see his mug. jb4 "They lead. They don't manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water, but you can't manage him to drink." Richard Kerr, United Technologies Corporation, 1990

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